By Jim Hannah
The Cincinnati Enquirer

FLORENCE - The suspect has been elusive.

Three workers saw the fugitive run through a parking lot in Boone County. Others saw something suspicious darting across Bluegrass Drive to take refuge in bushes and trees.

And on Tuesday night, Laura Hermann says she hit it crossing Weaver Road at the Interstate 71/75 overpass.

It was a bear, she said, echoing the other witnesses.

Yet searchers, some using night-vision goggles, found nothing.

Investigators are now hanging their hopes on hair samples taken from Hermann's Buick. They say a forensic analysis could provide enough evidence to pin the wreck on their leading suspect, a black bear.

While fish and wildlife officials in Frankfort says the odds of a black bear in Northern Kentucky are slim, a Cincinnati zoo manager believes bears could have traveled to the area this spring to eat cicadas.

"They will eat just about anything, including bugs," said Edward Spevak of the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden. "Black bears are opportunistic, and there are a lot of cicadas here. They are a great food crop for all types of animals. They are high in protein and low in fat."

There is a small population of black bears in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky. Some have even migrated to southeastern Kentucky from Tennessee, said Mark Marraccini, spokesman for the Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, but none are known to live in or around Northern Kentucky.

"We are not saying there isn't a black bear in Northern Kentucky," said Marraccini. "We are just saying, at this point, it is very unlikely. The cards are stacked against it."

Marraccini said he doesn't believe a bear could have traveled from the eastern Kentucky counties of Pike, Martin and Johnson to Florence without being spotted until Tuesday. He said the closest sighting to here was 92 miles east of Cincinnati, or roughly a two-hour drive, in Lewis County.

Hermann said she was afraid authorities wouldn't believe she hit a bear.

"I was hesitant to call police because I thought they will never believe that," said the 30-year-old Florence woman. "But when they arrived at the scene, they did believe me. They said others had reported seeing a black bear earlier in the day."

There was no timetable for when the forensic analysis on the hair will be completed.

E-mail jhannah@enquirer.com